Joseph Mayor suffered an industrial injury in December 2013 while working for Ross Valley Sanitation District (Ross Valley). A workers’ compensation judge (WCJ) later found Mayor totally and permanently disabled and issued an award in his favor. On March 23, 2023, Ross Valley timely filed a petition for reconsideration of that award with the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (Board). At the time, former Labor Code section 5909 provided that a petition for reconsideration “is deemed to have been denied” by the Board “unless it is acted upon within 60 days from the date of filing.” The WCJ never acted on the petition as required by regulation, and the Board itself took no action within the 60-day window. Seventy-four days after filing, Ross Valley sent a single inquiry letter asking about the petition’s status; the record does not show the Board ever responded.

One hundred forty-four days after the petition was filed, the Board issued an order granting reconsideration, attaching a “Shipley notice” (referencing Shipley v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1992) 7 Cal.App.4th 1104) stating that the Board had not received notice of the petition until around June 15, 2023, roughly 84 days after filing, and that its order would be considered timely if issued within 60 days of that later receipt date. Mayor petitioned the Court of Appeal for a writ of mandate seeking to rescind the Board’s order as untimely and to enforce the WCJ’s original award. While that petition was pending, the Board rescinded and reissued its order, this time explicitly invoking Shipley to justify tolling its own deadline based on an unspecified “administrative irregularity” in receiving the petition — a practice the Board said preserved due process and its constitutional mandate to achieve substantial justice.

Also while the matter was pending, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 171, amending section 5909 (effective as an urgency measure, later made permanent) to run the Board’s 60-day deadline from the date a trial judge transmits a case to the Board, rather than from the date of filing. The Court of Appeal granted Mayor’s writ petition, holding that the version of section 5909 in effect at the time was mandatory and that the Board exceeded its jurisdiction by granting reconsideration more than 60 days after the petition’s filing. The court followed Zurich American Ins. Co. v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (2023) 97 Cal.App.5th 1213, which had reached the same conclusion on similar facts, and read the Legislature’s subsequent amendment as tacit acquiescence in that interpretation. (Mayor v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (2024) 104 Cal.App.5th 1297.) The California Supreme Court granted review, and, while review was pending, deferred several other cases raising the same issue, including one, City of Salinas v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd., that had reached the opposite conclusion on whether the deadline is jurisdictional.

In the present case of Mayor v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, No. S287261 (Cal. Sup. Ct., August 2026) — the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeal granting Mayor’s petition for writ of mandate. However it was for somewhat different reasons.

A unanimous Supreme Court first addressed whether former section 5909’s 60-day deadline implicated the Board’s fundamental jurisdiction — a status that, unlike an ordinary mandatory deadline, cannot be waived, forfeited, or excused by equitable considerations. Applying the framework from Kabran v. Sharp Memorial Hospital (2017) 2 Cal.5th 330 and Law Finance Group, LLC v. Key (2023) 14 Cal.5th 932, the Court explained that a deadline is jurisdictional only where the Legislature signals that intent through unusually emphatic language, not merely by setting an exception-free deadline. The Court found no such language in former section 5909, contrasting it with neighboring provisions the Court has held are jurisdictional — section 5900’s requirement that petitions “shall be made only within the time and manner specified,” and section 5950’s 45-day deadline to seek judicial review “within the time limit specified in this section.” Because former section 5909 contained no comparably emphatic language and the Board’s continuing jurisdiction over its own awards is otherwise broadly preserved by section 5803 (limited only by a five-year outer boundary in section 5804), the Court held the 60-day deadline is mandatory but not jurisdictional in the fundamental sense: the Board’s grant-for-study order after the deadline was in excess of its jurisdiction, not void for lack of fundamental power to act at all.

That conclusion did not end the analysis, since even a nonjurisdictional deadline can be closed to equitable tolling if the Legislature so intends. The Court held the Board’s practice of self-tolling its own deadline was unsupported by the statute’s text or purpose. Equitable tolling, the Court explained, is a doctrine that excuses a litigant’s late filing where the litigant gave timely notice, caused no prejudice, and acted reasonably and in good faith — elements that presuppose a party seeking relief from its own deadline, not an adjudicative body extending the time allotted for its own decision. The Board, the Court held, is neither a litigant nor a party, and former section 5909 is not a statute of limitations at all, since it does not fix a deadline for anyone to bring a claim; it simply caps how long the Board has to act. The Court found no precedent applying equitable tolling to an adjudicative body’s own decisional deadline, and held the statute’s plain text — deeming a petition denied by operation of law after 60 days, with no textual exception — was inconsistent with allowing the Board to extend that period on its own initiative.

The Court also limited the reach of Shipley itself, disapproving it to the extent it suggests a categorical due process right to Board review of any timely-filed petition regardless of the 60-day deadline. Shipley, the Court explained, never applied or even mentioned the equitable tolling doctrine; it turned instead on the due process problems created when the Board misplaced a claimant’s file and repeatedly, affirmatively assured him his petition would eventually be considered. The Board could not convert that narrow due-process holding into a general license to toll its own statutory clock whenever an “administrative irregularity” caused it to receive a petition late, particularly where, as here, Ross Valley itself never asserted any due process violation. The Court left open what circumstances might support a due process claim in a future case, but held none was properly before it here.

Finally, the Court held writ relief in the Court of Appeal was the proper vehicle for Mayor’s challenge, rejecting the Board’s argument that Mayor’s only remedy was a later petition for writ of review of a final decision on the merits. Because the Board had already asserted jurisdiction and ruled on the petition when Mayor filed his writ petition, and because forcing an injured worker to wait indefinitely for a final decision would render the 60-day deadline’s protection of an expeditious end to proceedings meaningless, the Court agreed a writ of mandate (more precisely, the Court noted in a footnote, one properly framed as a writ of prohibition) was available to enforce the Board’s ministerial duty to act, if at all, within the statutory window. The Court expressed no view on whether or how Ross Valley might now seek relief from the consequences of the Board’s untimely action, since Ross Valley had not requested any relief of its own before the Court.

In a confusing Footnote 4, the court stated “We express no opinion on the propriety of the grant-for-study practice or whether the Appeals Board is required to issue a final decision on the merits within the 60-day statutory period pursuant to section 5908.5.”